A chart of accounts for property management is shaped by two decisions, and everything else is preference. The first is whether expense categories match the tax return you will file, because if they do not, every year ends with a recoding exercise. The second is whether money you hold for other people is structurally separate from your own. Get both right and the chart writes itself.
Match the return's categories first
The federal rental schedule already names the expense categories: advertising, auto and travel, cleaning and maintenance, commissions, insurance, legal and professional, management fees, mortgage interest, other interest, repairs, supplies, taxes, utilities, depreciation. Use those as your top-level expense accounts and add sub-accounts underneath for your own detail. The return then falls out of the accounts rather than being assembled from them.
Separate what is not yours
Tenant deposits are a liability, not income, and belong in their own account matched to a deposit bank account. If you manage for owners, money held for them is a liability too, and management fees are income only once earned. Building that into the chart rather than handling it by memory is what makes the accounts survive a change of bookkeeper.
A working structure
Assets: operating bank, deposit bank, rent receivable, prepaid, and each property or improvement at cost with its accumulated depreciation. Liabilities: accounts payable, tenant deposits held, prepaid rent, loans. Equity by owner or entity. Income: rent, late fees, other. Expenses in the return's categories with sub-accounts. Number with gaps so a new category does not force a renumber.
Dimensions beat more accounts
Resist a separate expense tree per property. Use one chart and a property dimension, class or tag, so that a repair is one account and the property is an attribute. Portfolios that grow an account per property per category end up with a chart nobody can read and reports nobody can compare across properties.
Questions people ask about chart of accounts for property management
Should each property have its own chart of accounts?
No. One chart with a property dimension keeps reports comparable and the return straightforward.
Where do tenant deposits go?
A liability account matched to the account the money is actually held in. Never income, and never netted against rent arrears in the accounts.
How detailed should expense accounts be?
Top level matching the return's categories, detail underneath. Detail above that line makes the return harder rather than the reporting better.